


Hunted By a Freak

by dacmennis



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Blood, Character Death, M/M, Mental Instability, Non-consent elements implied, Obsessive Behavior, Pain, Recreational Drug Use, Sex, Swearing, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-29
Updated: 2016-02-29
Packaged: 2018-05-24 01:12:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6136282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dacmennis/pseuds/dacmennis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Mac, even if I told you exactly why I was doing this, there is no way in a million years you'd understand the concept of how I love," Dennis spoke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hunted By a Freak

**Author's Note:**

> This story follows the timeline beginning immediately after season six/Dee Gives Birth, and continues loosely from there, ending at its present spot in-canon near the end of season eleven; save for the fact that their apartment never burned down in this story. I believe that this fic is more powerful as a one-shot instead of broken into chapters, so forgive me if it's a bit burdening to read. As always, enjoy.

"Come out, dude! This isn't funny!" Mac yelled to the wooden bedroom door, wrenching the handle from side to side until the weak locking mechanism sprung open, allowing Mac to enter upon the scene. "Oh my god, dude, what the fuck is going on with you?!"

Dennis sat slumped into the far corner of his darkened bedroom, half-asleep but not quite there, skin pale and malnourished, eyes sunken and the skin around them pulled tight like that of an emaciated dog. He slid his dead eyes up toward his friend as Mac crouched down at his feet.

"I'm okay, Mac, just don't feel well," Dennis sighed with the irritating fatigue of having not been able to sleep due to his mind racing for more than twenty-four hours at this point. He'd given up trying to rationalize how the fuck this had happened again, why he'd slipped into this irreversible reviling of himself, second-guessing every microcosm of his psyche. Every hour it'd gotten worse for the last day, he could feel a strange hollowing in his mind, something was missing, but how could something be missing when he had a million and one thoughts of failure and self-deprecation and worthlessness to fill it up? The back of his head swelled with a sickening dizziness, and not long ago he'd dug up the remainder of a prescription of Phenergan, an anti-nausea medication he'd pilfered from Dee after she gave birth. Pretty soon, the meds - though not effective on psychological issues - would lull his body into a fuzzy, dreamlike coziness, and he'd sleep for an entire day. Did he push his limits purposely? He didn't know anymore. He only knew how to clumsily bandage a wound akin to an uncontrollable hemorrhage.

Mac fumbled for his cell phone and dialed Dee's number. The line rang twice and quickly cut to voicemail. He tried again with the same results; he should have known that Dee would purposely ignore his calls. Thinking fast, he grabbed Dennis's phone from the bedside stand and shakily jammed his finger against Dee's name on the contact screen.

"What, asshole? I'm in the middle of something," Dee snapped on the line.

"Dee! Dennis is sick, I need you to come over here right now!" Mac's voice trembled as he struggled to get the correct words out.

"What? What's wrong with him?" Dee's voice came through concerned now, knowing that Mac wasn't one to show vulnerability unless it was true panic.

"I-I don't know! He locked himself in his room and I had to kinda bust in the door cause it'd been a whole day and he's just--just sitting here against the wall with this crazy stare! He won't really talk-"

"I'll be right there," Dee quipped and hung up the call.

Mac set the phone down next to him and reached for Dennis's hands, trembling and cold to the touch. "Den, what's going on? Will you please just tell me!"

"I don't know," Dennis mumbled. "I don't know what's going on."

Mac swallowed and racked his brain for any way to help. "When's the last time you've eaten? I'll go get you some food!" He hoisted himself up to stand when he was jerked back down by Dennis's hands snaking down his bare arm.

"No!" Dennis screamed, eyes widening, suddenly aware and panicked of Mac's words. "Don't leave me here!"

A lump rose in Mac's throat and his frustration grew with the ever-increasing notion that he couldn't read or help his best friend. He had never had to deal with anything like this before. His family had always been so headstrong about who they were and what they wanted -- his father, a naturally confident leader of the pack, and his mother, unfailingly steeped in her silence. Mac hadn't ever even had a friend whose mental status was questionable day-to-day. Some people may think that about Charlie, but Mac knew him inside and out and Charlie had never scared him. Charlie always just drank or huffed some glue to come out of whatever mood he was in. This wasn't a mood with Dennis. His evasion and avoidance lately was becoming alarming, and it was obvious that he didn't have a grasp on his reality.

Just then, Dee burst into the room, taking in the sight of her brother and his friend slumped into the corner, Mac's eyes red-rimmed on the verge of tears, Dennis's own sunken and hollow, vaguely scared but more than that, vacant and exhausted. Dee crossed the room and knelt down to her brother, taking his limp hands in hers. "Dennis?" She asked softly, eliciting a halfhearted smile from her brother. "It's okay, what's going on?"

Dennis cleared his throat and began to open up, eyes cast on his knees. "I've just been freaking out, man. Again. I thought I could do this but I can't. Why can't I just be normal? Why? Every fucking day it's getting worse."

Mac sat staring at his friend with wide brown eyes, attempting to make sense of Dennis's words. _Is he suicidal? Was he going to kill himself?! He'd go to hell! He can't go to hell!_ A wave of nausea washed over Mac and although he wanted to get up and leave the dark room, he couldn't put the sickening terror in Dennis's voice a moment ago out of his mind. Mac breathed in and put his hand on Dennis's shoulder and listened to Dee reassure him in a calm and mothering way, rubbing his hands and speaking low, so foreign from her typical crass and loud personality.

"Will you please consider seeing a doctor?" she asked.

Dennis shrugged and sighed deeply. "I can't, Dee. They'll put me on meds and it'll change me, but it'll change the good parts of me, at least for right now I'm mostly good and sometimes like, tunneled into this horrible mind space. It's like. I don't know what to do. I'm so afraid you guys will leave, that's like the exact fucking opposite of what I need. If you leave me, I'll...I don't know what I'll do...god damn it! This isn't even me! This is weak! This is the mind of a sickeningly weak person!" Dennis spat the words into his jeans as he hugged his knees closer and sobbed into the raw fabric.

Dee hugged him and ran her hand over his back and Mac sat, mouth agape, struggling to keep the confused tears from spilling from his own eyes. His gaze met Dee's and the hopelessly questioning look between them sent Mac over, and he bowed his head into Dennis's shoulder, partially to comfort his friend and also to obscure the wetness in his own eyes. His head stayed there against the soft material of Dennis's grey shirt and he listened silently as Dee began to speak again. As much as Mac swore he hated Dee, he couldn't deny that she was often the only one who could hold herself together when someone else needed it the most.

"Dennis, look, we aren't going anywhere. I'm never going to leave you, I've been with you since day one, quite literally. Mac won't ever leave you either, would you?" 

"No," Mac answered, unable to bring his head up and acknowledge the fact that he was coming down from being scared out of his skin, frenetic and confused, feeding off of Dennis's strange energy.

"But Dennis, you've got to realize that you need to deal with your issues in a healthy way. I know it sounds like I'm a total hypocrite or cliché or something, but you can't keep on like this. You're miserable. You're clingy, you're unhealthily obsessed with validation in every avenue of your life."

"Stop! I'm not like that," Dennis laughed shakily, bringing his head up weakly from his knees. "I'm not fucking...I'm not that fucking fragile, I'm not going to...break like a crystal vase if I get knocked down." Dennis flicked his hand to accentuate his point. He took in a deep breath and exhaled, nudging Mac from his shoulder. The two locked eyes and something between them clicked for a single second -- a hint of disbelief that Mac was so upset about his well-being, a reassurance of loyalty in his friend's wet, concerned eyes -- and Dennis let go of his knees and stretched his legs out in front of him. He looked into Dee's wide, softened blue eyes and nodded his head to himself. These two were his life, the two who he knew cared about him more than anyone ever had and would, but it wasn't as simple as telling himself that, even if it'd been proven. Had it been proven? Had they ever left him? Dennis attempted to form these thoughts coherently in his head. If he could explain it, he might say that it was a deep chasm that remained stitched closed inside of him, but days come where the sutures are ripped out violently and the wound lies garish and split, an abyss of loneliness and fear growing uncontrollably in his heart, exacerbated to the point that he was assuredly going to die alone right on the spot. But saying all of this was too much for Dennis, and he wasn't entirely sure Mac and Dee would understand, so he just didn't say it.

"I'll make an appointment, tomorrow, I will," Dennis sighed, though he had no intention to act on his promise. It was just so futile to him, because this would pass as soon as he'd gotten a proper night's sleep and his body reset its natural rhythm. Dennis smiled sleepily at his sister now, the fuzzy feeling of the medicine's comfort shimmying through his delicate nerves and pulling his eyelids downward. 

"God damn it, Dennis," Dee stated, pulling herself up from the floor and smoothing her blouse. "I really hope you do. You think I like to admit that you worry me? I've got too much pride!"

Dennis nodded at her admission and waved her away. "I'll be alright, I swear. I don't want my sex drive to be hampered by psych meds, though...not exactly thrilled at the idea..."  


"God, you would," Dee snorted. "Only you would be so selfish that you'd care more about your dick than your mental health and everyone around you."

"Nahh," Dennis mumbled through his now-clouded haze, rising to climb into his bed and sleep his thoughts away, burrowing deep into the thick blankets that served as a comforting retreat away from reality. He listened to Dee shuffle out of the apartment, muttering to herself words that matched those echoing through his own mind. Selfish. Unbelievable. Petty.

⁂

That was a few years ago, though the scenario remained a fresh wound ripped open in his mind every time he dared to dredge it up. There were days that Dennis felt invincible against the world, unstoppable in his quest to finally unveil his friends' eyes to the delusions they'd been living in for much of their adulthood now. For it was Dennis who always pushed them to break out of their molds and be true to themselves, to coerce his sister from her dreams of acting with the blunt reality that she just wasn't any good at it. She hadn't listened to him in the long run, but for a while, she'd deadened herself to acting and it lit Dennis up like a Christmas tree to see her come to terms with it; as uneasy as it was to watch her mope around in filth, he knew it was for the best. Wanting the best for his sister, how was _that_ selfish?

It was Dennis who had convinced Charlie to get the stupid goddamned idea of living happily ever after with the Waitress out of his mind. He'd berated the shit out of her to Charlie one night when he'd cornered his friend in Paddy's basement, taunting him with the fact that everyone had fucked her, that she was stupid and easy for everyone except him, and that was just the cruel reality of it. He'd railed Charlie for nearly an hour until Charlie had refused to talk to him for days. After that, Dennis noticed, Charlie didn't talk much to him directly anymore. Opening his dimwitted friend's eyes to the world around him and providing him with the intelligence to recognize future bullshit, how was _that_ selfish?

And Dennis's proudest and most difficult accomplishment was the man whose warm body he felt cuddled up close behind him now as they slept, the comforting press of lips against his neck, breathing in small, contented respirations. Dennis lifted Mac's arm gently and pulled it tighter around him, curling Mac's fingers around his own fist in a protective fashion. The two had been together, in every sense of the word, for a couple of years now. It never would have happened if Dennis, of course, hadn't coaxed Mac out of his homophobic shell through carefully calculated maneuvers that forced Mac to give up the lie that he lived every day of being 'straight.' Everyone saw through it, but only Dennis was brave enough to make it his own business to deflower Mac from his staunchly-held convictions, to hold the mirror grossly up to his friend's face and force him to confront himself. Dennis observed the distress in Mac's eyes when he sprung himself on his friend and knocked him to the ground in a flurry of breathless kisses for the first time, pinning Mac to the ground and repeating "don't fight this" like a broken record; watching that initial horror soften into pleasure over the course of weeks of them fucking around until Mac began happily initiating the first move each and every time after a while. The two of them relished in lazy early-morning makeout sessions, abandoning the world around them during the newfound physicality of their relationship, worshiping each other, Dennis for once in his life smiling and laughing genuinely, the singeing embers of his heart cast aglow again every time he heard Mac tell him that he loved him – and Dennis finding it easy to reciprocate the exhilarating words truthfully against his friend’s body and over the phone when they were away from each other. He had never loved anyone in his entire life the way he greedily loved Mac – not even himself. Dennis had taught Mac to be comfortable and free inside his own skin, and _how in god's name could teaching someone to self-love be selfish?_

Dennis remembered lying to his friends more times than they could count about seeing a doctor for his mental health, but it wasn't because he was trying to hurt them, no. He was man enough to take the bull by the horns and fix things himself, that's all it was. Why succumb to the soul-sucking void that medicines provided you, when good old-fashioned hard work yielded the same results? He'd put his nose to the grind wheel in that sense and made it a point to stuff his feelings down, drown them in alcohol and drugs, or ignore them altogether until they burst at the seams, the apartment littered with smashed items and the bottoms of his feet slashed with a razor blade, bleeding out into the warm water of a bubble bath. Nobody could see the scars on the bottoms of his feet. He couldn't dare ruin his preserved image of youth and beauty that he'd spent years perfecting.

And so that's how he lived, the ability to unhinge a few times a year a small price to pay to avoid being treated and losing the essence of who he was at the core. He willed himself to bury his emotions deep into the crevices of his bones like a skeleton in the grave. Dennis surmised that he'd be okay eventually, so long as nobody fucked with him.

⁂

"Mmmm, fuck, you're so good, baby," Dennis breathed into his lover's ear, fucking him senseless, rhythmically pumping his cock in and out of Mac's body, moans theatrically strangling in his throat as his body was taken over by an orgasm unapologetically. "Fuck yeah, take it..."

Mac panted through the dry and brackish taste that had built up in his throat, thankful that it was finally over and that he had survived, wincing in pain as Dennis slipped out of him and stood up to go clean off in the bathroom. Dennis didn't seem to notice that he'd begun to hurt Mac when they had sex and Mac refused to say anything, rationalizing that he shouldn't have to say it, that his stiffness in bed and blatantly telling Dennis "no" when he went too deep should say everything for him. It hurt Mac's pride to admit that he had a threshold in the first place and it seemed necessary now to tell Dennis that he's begun to cross it, but Mac had never been very good with words and couldn't materialize the conversation he wanted to have with Dennis in his mind. 

After ten minutes alone with his thoughts, Mac shifted and sat up from the sheets, accosted suddenly by the sight of fresh blood staining the spot where they'd just had sex. God damn it, Mac thought, this is enough. He tore through the apartment and ripped open the bathroom door, Dennis clad in a fluffy beige towel meticulously preening himself in front of the mirror, freshly showered. He cast a sidelong glance at his friend, ignoring the torrent of words spewing from his mouth about bleeding and getting hurt during sex and Dennis not giving a shit about anything but blowing his load. He halfway listened to Mac rattle on and on until one word hit him like razor wire through the palms of his hands.

"...so god damn _selfish!"_ Mac was silenced by the most hateful glare Dennis could muster, the white-hot indignation flaring deep within his gut, forcing the wrath of a thousand gods to stay put inside of him. If he were to act on the pure, unadulterated hate he felt right now in this moment, he would be arrested for a very brutal murder. Dennis struggled to stay composed, white knuckles gripping the porcelain bowl of the sink before him, where minutes ago, he washed the blood off of his genitals, having knowingly ripped open a painful fissure inside his friend during their intercourse, but said nothing because he knew Mac wouldn't, either.

Dennis inhaled and counted to three silently in his head. Mac was typically easy to talk down, preferring to acquiesce to the easiest route of the problem being solved rather than to fight for how he felt anymore. "I would never hurt you, you know that," he offered. 

Mac looked Dennis directly in the face and twisted his eyebrows into a pained expression. "You already have," he pointed out.

Mac wasn't lying. Tonight's transgression was only a breaking point to a long list of acts of carelessness Dennis had committed recently, consciously on his behalf, but it wasn't something he felt the need to apologize for. That's just the way things were - the world was tough and Mac was going to have to get used to it, especially if he wanted the two of them to stay together through it all. That was the jading reality of life. Unless you were a millionaire who could do anything you wanted at any given time, you'd have to settle for dealing with all the unpleasantries life had to offer - pain and torture just coming along with the territory, Dennis reflected. _Sure, I could be more cautious with him, but why should I have to be? He's so irritating sometimes, he whines too much for my liking...I suppose I could do something about it, after all, though..._

Mac stood impatiently in the doorframe of the bright, steamy bathroom, weary from the night's events and a bit regretful that he'd said anything at all. He used to be so quick to explode his feelings like splatter paint on a canvas, punctuating the air with curse words and violently gesticulating around himself, driving the point home that he would most definitely stick his thumb through someone's eye if they dared to retaliate against him with their own rebuttal. Straightjacketed into the apartment with Dennis, though, after a handful on years of the roller coaster of romance, arguments, sex, and elation, he found it tough to muster up more than a few half-assed sentences before he gave up, unable to penetrate Dennis's brick wall mentality that he showed when he didn't want to give in to Mac. 

"Come here," Dennis said, and held out his arms to embrace Mac against his still-damp chest, apologizing as his friend wrapped his arms around Dennis's waist, circumspect of the genuineness of Dennis's utterances of "I'm sorry" into his hair. "You know you're the only one I can even say that to," Dennis crooned, filling Mac's head with the notion that he was the only special person in Dennis's life. Mac accepted the apology easily, felt the long fingers raking through his hair and nails scratching his scalp, warm pleasure dancing down his spine. Dennis broke their hug and began to speak again.

"I've got an idea. Why don't we take a break from all this bullshit. Let's go out in the woods and go camping next weekend."

"You hate camping," Mac brought up, remembering the time Dennis had broken out in a severe rash after he'd been eaten alive by mosquitoes, proclaiming camping to be the lifestyle of uneducated heathens.

"It's...it's fine, Mac. It'll be different this time, trust me. I'm willing to give it another shot. We'll go next weekend, we can say we're going to run an errand and then just ditch the bar. They'll be okay without us." Mac smiled for the first time in a week, mirroring Dennis's expression, but as always, failing to detect any danger churning underneath the deep water of the shiny exterior. 

"I can't wait," Mac laughed excitedly, prattling on about what badass things they could do in the woods, and Dennis let him ramble while he got busy planning the event of a lifetime for the both of them, his stare lingering on Mac’s toned body with insatiable hunger, sparks flickering to life in the back of his brain.

⁂

Dennis was born into this world as innocent and wide-eyed as every other newborn, a mismatched set of blonde hair and flailing limbs along with his twin sister. Over the course of his life he grew up in an environment rich with snobbery and class, packaging himself into snappy clothing and an air of sassy cool, buoying himself above his classmates in every category - at least, in his mind, he was.

One autumn day when the leaves had lost their green and wilted into a tawny spectrum blanketing the ground, Dennis had nearly gone crazy from lack of substances to stick in his body. His mother had locked up the liquor cabinet with a new set of padlocks, and when Dennis expertly picked them and smirked as he threw open the ornate cabinet doors, his expression pulled into a harrowing grimace when he found the cabinet dark and empty. _God damn it, that stupid bitch!_ he thought and slammed the cabinet closed with fury, beating his fists and kicking his topsiders indignantly against the mahogany doors until they splintered, wooden shards sticking mercilessly into the thin flesh of his knuckles. Dennis screamed, Dee screamed back across the room from him, but it wasn't as serious for her - _all that bitch had to deal with was an ugly aluminum brace, shit, it wasn't even that heavy, I don't know why she's always bitching. It's worse for me - I need this shit to feel some semblance of normalcy!_

For the first time in his life, Dennis was forced to lower himself to seek out the assistance of one of the dregs of society. He certainly didn't desire to associate with such white trash, but he had no other choice. He had to enlist the services of Ronnie the Rat.

Dennis didn't know Ronnie, only knew of him. He'd only seen him around, knew that he sold weed and provided pretty much the only product of illegal nature to the kids in school, but Dennis - no, Dennis didn't need to flounder among the low class. There was only one problem - he didn't have anyone else to score for him. 

The next afternoon, Dennis slipped stealthily out to the football field during lunch period, donning Ray-Bans and straightening his posture to appear taller, more experienced. He remembered stooping underneath the huge metal bars and set his eyes on Ronnie, alone and in the flesh. Quickly deciding that the boy wasn’t any type of threat whatsoever, Dennis curled his lip at the sight of the guy - black t-shirt with the sleeves slashed off underneath a beat-up leather jacket, tattered jeans and weak but tanned arms, weirdly shaped eyes that slanted downward at the outer corners. _What race is he?_ Dennis wondered. _Some weird kind of European?_

"Hey," Dennis marched up to Ronnie and quickly made it seem like he did this all the time. "You holding?"

Ronnie stared blankly and firm at Dennis's shielded eyes. "Take off your sunglasses," he demanded.  


"God damn, really?" Dennis snapped the shades off and gestured with them in hand. "Look, are you happy? Do you have any weed or not?"

"Who're you?" Ronnie sized up Dennis's lanky body, pursing his lips and attempting to look bulkier than his five-foot-nine frame actually was.

"Fuck. Dennis Reynolds, does it matter? You know what, fuck it, you've got too many questions, man," Dennis gave up, turning on his heel to walk away, silently fuming that this dumb shit wouldn't even be happening if his bitch of a mother hadn't hidden all of the liquor and his useless joke of a sister wasn't so obvious with her brace that she couldn't shoplift any.

"Wait," Ronnie called after him, mesmerized by the initial shock reverberating through his body from the time Dennis unveiled his intense, steely blue eyes. It was amazing how much the eyes changed a person's face altogether, how you could shroud any other feature by itself and it would never have the impact it would if the eyes were covered.

They were inseparable after that afternoon - first, secretly, as Dennis was still hung-up as all hell over the fact that he was hanging out with white trash regularly and enjoying it, but he took up a certain comfort in Mac's naïveté - Mac being what Ronnie preferred to be called, though nobody at school complied with this request. It was both unnerving and amusing to Dennis that Mac had to be taught simple things like manners and how to dress. Mac didn't listen much, but he loved to talk for hours on end about his religious beliefs, hulking action film stars, and his 'badass' father who'd recently landed a long stint in prison. Mac was embarrassingly proud of his dad. And contrary to his earlier held belief, Mac wasn't dirty at all - sure, he'd forged a lifelong friendship with that disgusting nitwit Charlie Kelly, but Mac was a spectacularly hygienic person at the end of the day, showering constantly and drowning himself in cologne, it seemed. Dennis felt himself slipping into the unfamiliar clutches of a crush, his heart fuzzing with a warm glow when he and Mac were alone getting high in his bedroom plastered with posters of stupid rock bands that Dennis hated listening to. When they would sit there and pass a blunt or colorful glass pipe between them, air brazen with the skunky stench of burnt marijuana, Dennis would lean his head back against the soft quilts of the bed, squint his eyes closed and blame it on the high, but it was the easiest way to check Mac out without being obvious. Mac with his crooked smile that lopped too much to his right, bangs flopping into his eyes, completely unaware of how endearing his boyish features made him look, how attractive he was to Dennis. His lips looked soft – and goddamn if Dennis didn’t swear that Mac bit his lip coyly and batted his eyelashes every now and then - but Dennis squelched down the raging sexual tension he felt every time he fantasized about how well Mac could probably fuck him, closing his eyes and nodding off into a daydream of the two of them arching their backs against the childishly-patterned sheets of Mac’s bed and shaking virginal with anxiety. It'd be years before Dennis would make a move, instead finding it easier to pound out his unrequited love through frustratingly inferior sexual encounters with scores of women, and a few men along the way, but none of them ever flashing his heart with the flares he felt from Mac simply standing in his presence. 

He couldn't tell Mac, because he couldn't understand it within himself. Dennis laid on his bed alone some days and let the darkness of his emotions consume him like a parasite, sucking the marrow from his limbs and rendering his body useless to do anything but lie there and take it, staring at the ceiling or shutting his eyes, it didn't matter - all he ever saw was blinding black; curling onto his side and suffocating his tears with a pillow as he fought an exhausting battle within himself, the tiny shred of genuine self-worth he had flailing uselessly in the ocean of failure, drowning into the undertow of his soul.

⁂

The heavy summer night sky lit up with a million stars as the pair zoomed further away from the light pollution of Philadelphia, the outskirts of town affording a much cleaner scent to the air, slightly smoky from a tinge of a bonfire a few miles in the distance. Mac squinted his eyes to bring the pinpoint stars into focus, Dennis's right hand leaden on his knee, kneading the muscles of his thigh through the navy cotton pants.

"I'm really excited about this, babe," Dennis remarked, driving more carefully now as he steered the Rover down a gravel backroad, creeping at half the previous speed to avoid dinging up the car's glossy exterior. He squeezed Mac's knee for emphasis before bringing his hand back to the wheel, scanning the vast expanse of farmland for the appropriate turn-off that would lead them into the woods.

"I am, too," Mac answered. The obsidian blanket of the sky undulated for miles and hemmed them in to their own private world away from the city and the bullshit that imbued everyday life. Mac had wanted to grow up in the country as a child, pining for the week that came once every summer where his parents dumped him off on his aunt and uncle so they could commit deviant crimes together while their gangly little boy had a blast with his cousin of the same name, running through cornfields and hunting raccoons with the ultra-cool Country Mac. The two of them became lost for hours in their own woods surrounding the private house on a dead-end road, the air lush with the stink of farmland but bursting at the seams with the possibilities hidden in running streams and abandoned train tracks. The world stretched on forever away from the city and Mac recalled fondly the first night he'd camped out under the stars, the quiet still of the night rendering him sleepless due to the lack of traffic's white noise. He'd tunneled down into his sleeping bag and concentrated hard on the crickets humming their serenade deep into the twilight and eventually he'd found the sleep that had eluded him between the wee hours of the morning and the ever-lightening blue gradient of sunrise.

Mac's daydreamed memories terminated with the braking of the Range Rover and Dennis throwing the car in park. They had arrived at their destination: a clearing at the end of a narrow dirt path, shrouded in darkness and silent among the throngs of trees dappling the landscape.

"Fuck, it's dark out here," Dennis stated. He fished a baton flashlight out from under his seat and handed it to Mac, along with a travel kit containing firestarting supplies. "Can you take this and start a fire? I'll get the rest of the stuff to set up. I don't want to get too dirty, ya know?" He waved his fingers, emphasizing his distaste for muck on his clothes.

"Right," Mac agreed, taking the bundle of supplies into his arms and setting up camp in the middle of the clearing, a fire sparking easily from the twigs and chaff he'd gathered in record time from the area.

Dennis had packed the cooler thoughtfully, careful to keep his and Mac's drinks separate, administering liquid Rohypnol into his friend's beers surreptitiously as he pretended to fumble around in the car. His eyes darted nervously between the task at hand and Mac's hunkered form knelt before the fire, calling out tasks to him when he sensed Mac rising up from his crouched position on the ground.

"Hey buddy? Spread out that blanket, will ya?" Dennis busied Mac while he finished recapping the beers in a fashion he hoped Mac wouldn't notice, the dented caps barely noticeable save for a minute crease against the flat lid. On second thought, Dennis decided to uncap the beers himself when the time called for them to drink.

"Thanks, man," Dennis approached the blanket, setting the cooler down carefully between the two of them. 

"Look what I found!" Mac waved two long twigs around excitedly.

"What are those for?" Dennis inquired, eyeing the cooler as if it needed watched like a wandering toddler.

"Marshmallows, dude! We can roast 'em! You brought marshmallows, right?"

Dennis shook his head at Mac's animated grin and dark eyes reflecting the flickering campfire. God, those gorgeous eyes he'd spent days lost in sometimes. He was going to miss this.

"Mac, let me ask you something," Dennis began, patting the empty spot on the blanket next to him. 

Mac strode over and plopped down, rocking back and forth slightly. "Yeah hey but first, did you bring any weed, dude? I wanna smoke out before we start drinking."  


"No...I didn't bring any," Dennis answered, the flames of the fire drawing him into a trance, retinae burning goldenrod and orange. "Mac, I want you to be honest with me, regardless of how you think I'm going to react based on your answer. I want you to think about all of the personality traits that make me who I am. What are the first three you'd come up with?"

"Why does it matter, dude?" Mac fiddled with his shoelaces, casting his friend a quizzical look. 

"Just answer the question!"

"Uhhh, fine. Top three personality traits of Dennis Reynolds. Aggressive....hmmmm, manly? And I guess I'd say helpful, sometimes."

Dennis's eyebrows quirked at the strange answer. "Aggressive, really? Helpful? What do I help you with? Wouldn't you say that I'm...selfish?"

Mac cocked his mouth to the side and narrowed his eyes in Dennis's direction, gesturing his left hand into an open palm. "Really, dude? Did you come here to pick a fight with me?"

"You're the one who brought it up to me the other night in the bathroom."

"Yeah, because you are, a lot of the time. I don't really care, but sometimes dude, it really freaks me out that you can be so just, like unreceptive to me. Like what I'm trying to tell you without getting in your face about it-"

"And how many times have I god damn told you how much I hate that?! Do you not listen to anything anyone says right to your face? Or do you just - do you just glaze right over it and keep doing things your way to frustrate people?! Do you realize that part of what attracted me to you in the first place was your volatility? What you used to have of it, anyway. It used to excite me."

Mac turned his face away from the fire, willing himself to ignore Dennis's rant and fix the problem later. This was supposed to be a night of enjoyment, not bickering over the semantics of a conversation they'd had a week ago. Mac largely misinterpreted body language and what people meant when they spoke, but he never thought he'd miss the mark with Dennis so much as he did when he'd pissed him off. Mac only wanted to be Dennis's center of calm, and felt a sting of failure every time it was he who flared his lover's anger. It was not an easy feeling to push away.

"Look, let's not worry about it," Dennis pulled Mac back into the conversation, crawling toward him on the soft velveteen blanket, his hands snaking their way up Mac's body through the convenient access of the ripped sleeveless holes in his shirt. Mac sighed and shook the grip of having to walk on eggshells from his mind and yielded to Dennis pressing their lips together and toying with his hair. Down they went together under the canopy of the sky in the middle of nowhere, their fingers intertwined, leading to limbs straddling each other and tongues wrestling in an unspoken language only the two could decipher, because it was theirs alone.

⁂

Fuck anyone who had ever accused him of being so selfish that he would throw his own friends in front of a speeding bus to avoid getting hit. _Selfish? There's nothing selfish in making sure that the most elite member of the group goes on to live and the weak die out,_ he thought as he knotted the scratchy rope around Mac's weak, limp arms. _Nothing selfish about that, it's just Darwinism, natural selection. The strongest, most intelligent survive, and those who were unlucky enough to survive birth to turn out flawed and undesirable, well, fate would lead them to their death. The way that it ought to be._

The endeavor of stretching his friend's dead weight into a vertical position against the thick tree trunk was proving to be incredibly difficult, and Dennis cursed silently to himself for not tying Mac up before his friend had blacked out. Every time he tried to hoist Mac's body up against the tree, he'd lose his footing and the both of them would crumple lifelessly to the ground, rife with twigs and crunchy leaves providing an unsavory landing. Dennis always prided himself on the details, but sometimes there were simply too many to account for. 

To accomplish the task at hand, Dennis jammed his hands under Mac's arms and brought him into a standing position as best he could. He pinned his friend's body into place by placing his knee directly underneath Mac's crotch and tentatively stretching the rope around the circumference of the tree, fumbling for the two ends to meet together on the other side. Mac's weight began to slip uneasily and threatened to hinder the process once again. "Fuck," Dennis whispered, steadying Mac again and pressing the side of his face into the sweaty, warm flesh of Mac's shallowly-breathing torso. With a quick flourish of his hands blindly working around the other side of the tree, Dennis finished the knots from memory and let his hands come back around to take another length of rope. He repeated the process again, tethering Mac's body solidly against the unforgiving bark of the tree. 

"There," Dennis moved gingerly and unpinned his knee from the trunk first, then pressing his hands into Mac's chest and backing away inch by inch until it became apparent that his body was able to be held by the ropes around his waist. Dennis breathed a sigh of relief and took Mac's hands in his own, reveling in the sight of his friend's body glistening with sweat, jaw slack and unaware under the closeted treetops that concealed them from human contact for miles in any direction.

Binding Mac's hands proved much easier. Dennis stretched Mac's lax arms high above his head and began securing them with rope as he delved into his thoughts once more. _It's not out of selfishness that I do this, how the hell could it be selfish to martyr someone? That's the ultimate sacrifice and I'm just helping him along, helping him achieve the greatness that he's deluded himself into for years. It's not possibly selfish to give up such an indelible part of yourself, is it? If I sacrifice him, well shit - a sacrifice is an offering, it's just about as giving and selfless as you can get._ The ropes slid together effortlessly as Dennis pulled them through each other into complicated knots that he wasn't entirely sure he'd mastered, but at this point, it didn't matter if the job was done right, so long that the job was done. Dennis paused after the final tug at the rope and let his fingers slide easily into Mac's own limp ones, pressing the weight of their bodies together, kissing the salty, dirty flesh of Mac's neck and reveling in the totality of the moment, heart pounding wildly with anticipation because at any minute, his friend would begin to rouse from his drug-induced slumber and find himself bound and captured by none other than the man he'd loved forever but mistakenly trusted with his own life. 

With a sigh of relief and somewhat satisfied with the tethering, Dennis resigned himself to the blanket they'd made love on only a couple of hours before, cracked open a beer icy from the cooler, and leaned back on his elbows to wait.

⁂

Mac coughed and sputtered for a few seconds before he realized that, holy shit, this was it. Dennis had finally lost his mind and, of course, he was the target. Jagged tree bark dug into his backside with a hateful punctuation, itching the skin of his arms achingly as he struggled against the ropes that held him in place. 

"Dennis?! What the fuck did you do to me?!" Mac screamed with exhaustion, realizing that he was cold as shit and naked against the night, shamed but helpless at the hands of his sinister lover. "Bro...did you fucking drug me? You piece of shit!"

Dennis smirked at his friend, not surprised that only Mac could stare death straight in the face and still lack the sense to understand what he's looking at. "This is it, baby boy."

"This is what?!"

Dennis took a long swig of his beer, draining the bottle, tossing it into the weak fire he'd managed to keep going for the last couple of hours. "This is what we've been waiting for our entire lives. Well, I have, anyway."

Mac couldn't escape the pull of emotion written all over his friend's face, but it was confusing and scary, written in a thousand languages Mac had never bothered to learn. His only tactic to deal with Dennis lately was to squelch the anger and rage as quickly as possible by replacing it with what he could do to defuse the situation. What he could get for him, who he could be to shut him up and make him happy. Mac had always failed to understand that there's no 'making things right' or 'smoothing it all over' for Dennis, but he'd have been damned if he didn't try and exert himself until all of his energy had been drained into the abyss that was the man he loved, only for the both of them to collapse nightly into each other and repeat the process again. Not every day was as bad as the last, but it wasn't a stretch to say that everyone around them had begun to notice the toxicity of the pair. The sweetness of their relationship that had existed initially had wilted and dried like dead flowers, easily ignitable if something were to spark and set the two ablaze.

"Mac, I need you to calm down and let me ask you something," Dennis spoke evenly and low, rising from his place on the blanket and meeting Mac's wild eyes, wet and afraid. "This will be a lot easier if you just cooperate and let me lead you."

"Where has that ever gotten us?!" Mac spit his fear into Dennis's face, nearly hyperventilating at the sickening feeling of being restricted into place. "You're fucking crazy! You do everything wrong!"

Dennis let the jab slide, a sharp sting that would have previously set him on fire with anger. "I'm as clear in this moment as I've ever been in my entire life," Dennis spoke against Mac's lips, tasting a hint of metallic blood from where his friend had bitten his lip from overwhelming terror, shining crimson in the weak moonlight. "Listen to me. Do you remember one of the first nights we were together, we sat in bed after the most amazing fucking of either of our entire lives, and I let you blather on and on about your feelings - you were sober as shit, too, don't think I forgot about this - you sat there looking more beautiful than you ever had in your life, which I never told you that, but that's how I saw you there, and you said, 'God, Dennis, I would die for you, I really would,' and I told you to stop making it so serious, there's no need to go on like that, just enjoy what we've got and don't get so hung up over me?"

Mac gulped and closed his eyes, the images flashing back to him from that night that'd been stamped forcefully into his mind, replayed so often to prove to himself that there was a good side to Dennis, after all, and he was so lucky to get to see it in the quiet moments together as they snuggled in bed and talked about their future, a huge weight off Mac's shoulders to be able to let down the tough-guy guard and reveal the highly emotive, sensitive side of himself that he'd learned early on to conceal for fear of getting his ass kicked. He knew without a doubt that those words verbatim had left his lips, as sure and he knew his obsession with the man standing before him had never let up, not from that first moment they'd met under the bleachers more than two decades ago, Dennis stepping up to Mac in a navy blue sweater and shiny white shoes with way more confidence than a teenage kid should have, seemingly worldly and smart but Mac eventually found out that this was just one false facet to the masks Dennis wore to hide himself. But Mac had found the good parts of Dennis amidst the wreckage, he could have sworn that he did. He thought he'd seen it in the way they conquered others together, in the way their lips moved slowly against each other in the dark at first, then graduating to public declarations, grossing everyone out around them; Mac thought he'd seen it when Dennis would whisper in his ear and demand his attention away from the hateful comments of others as they hung all over each other. How disillusioned had he been to misinterpret these imperceptible acts of love? _Did_ he? A lifetime of never second-guessing himself was meaningless in this moment. He couldn't be certain of anything for the first time ever, not with his body stretched precariously against the dead of the night.

"Yeah," Mac replied dazedly, the ambiguous sensation of blood having drained from his arms scaring him a bit. 

"Good," Dennis decided. "That's important because I want you to understand something. It's only with your past admission that I feel alright in sacrificing you. Technically, it's something you've already agreed to."

"What the fuck?! Sacrificing me to who?! You don't believe in God! Any God! Right?!" Mac screamed and twisted his wrists as best he could against the taut bindings, but the paresthesia that had set in rendered the struggle useless, as he could no longer feel his hands. His heels dug into the dirt to ground himself, but the intricate weaving of the ropes at his feet disallowed any sort of comfort.

"Listen, baby. It's something I've got to do. Your god and my god are two very, very different ideas. Your god knew about this - he knows the day, time, and hour when you'll die, right? He knew this was in your fate and he's letting it happen anyway. I'm not asking you to renounce your belief - you've got to understand that I'm martyring you, in a sense. It is decidedly so."

"Why?! What did I do?!" 

"It's not what you did, babe, but rather what I've never done. I've never proved my worth as an individual with the capacity to care about anyone else but my goddamn self. You're going to be my sacrifice. Within you lies the essence of something I can't feel - you've got enough love to carry the both of us. I'm going to siphon it out of you by way of the bow," Dennis explained, gritting his teeth to steel himself against the harsh, desolate screams resonating from his best friend's throat. 

"Try not to scream, that'll only make it worse," Dennis instructed and fiddled with the lock on the Range Rover's trunk. _God, Mac is so easy and stupid,_ he thought as he relinquished the weaponry from the vehicle - a crossbow and arrows, unbelievably heavy and large in the small expanse of the trunk space. _Kinda funny how someone who spent his entire life thinking he could shelter people from danger would blindly trust anyone at all with his own fate. He didn't even look back here!_

Mac wailed mournfully when he caught sight of Dennis handling the crossbow and fought hard against the ropes, futile and he knew it. "You're really going to do this, right? You know you're really going to fuck yourself in the afterlife? How does that not scare you?! Everything bad that's ever happened to you and me is all your fucking fault, by the way, just getting that out there since this is actually happening..."

The shrill words fell on deaf ears as Dennis hummed to himself, admittedly trembling, but controlling his breathing to give off the impression that this wasn't scaring the shit out of him just as much as it was befalling his best friend. Dennis remembered the past, too. Just because he was crazy by everyone's judgment didn't mean that he wasn't lucid as shit the entire time he was sober. It was lucidity that was driving him to do this, the clear realization that he was capable to love someone to death, literally, to abandon the selfish wanting of someone he loved by his side for the rest of their days. It was the intent to prove everyone wrong, everyone who had ever pegged him for selfish and inconsiderate and dismissed him as a horrible person who could never give up anything he indulged in. There was nothing as entire as killing off such a large part of himself, shutting down everyone's expectations of him and proving them wrong. Dennis almost couldn't wait to see the sheer terror in the eyes of his sister and Charlie when they came out to the woods to stumble upon the scenario the next afternoon, falling to their knees in the sticky mud of the forest, screaming their lungs out as they watched the heavy summer rain cleanse the blood running away in rivulets from Mac's body. He smiled to himself as he imagined what it'd be like to show them the absolute power that he was capable of, the steel resolve he'd forged from his mind alone to rebuff any overpowering emotion that would hinder his quest. He'd sit calmly while his friends lost their mind at the sight of Mac dead and bound, impaling the truth into their minds that it could have been one of them - oh god, it could have been - and could come to be. Selfish. _God damn, how dare anyone make such an accusation?_

"Nobody can say I never loved you enough, now," Dennis sighed as he steadied the bow against his thigh, twenty yards in front of his target. Mac's dark eyes shut as he weakly pleaded for his lover to stop what he was doing and let him go. "Just think of this as you did when we played Chardee MacDennis - the ultimate symbol of love - what was it that you sculpted out of clay, again?"

"An arrow," Mac realized with a wave of revulsion washing over him, his tongue heavy and swelling in his throat, the pain in his back knifing its way down to the bone. Strands of raven hair clung to his damp forehead. He blew it out of his face as best he could before proceeding. "Cupid's arrow, though...why...? This isn’t love, Dennis!"

"Mac, even if I told you exactly why I was doing this, there is no way in a million years you'd understand the concept of how I love," Dennis spoke, and with a raising of the bow and steady pinning of the arrow into the flight groove, he proved his point to the quailing man ahead of him. Bowing his head slightly, a whisper of "god damn you all" escaped his lips and he squeezed the trigger, the concept of time completely foreign to the both of them as Mac immediately found his abdomen seeping blood from the arrow presently stuck through his squirming flesh, three inches above his left hipbone. His screams were cut short in the black of the night by another arrow piercing him squarely through his diaphragm, perforating the lower lobe of his right lung, rendering his ability to breathe useless, the slow burning of the loss of oxygen tearing through his pulmonary veins. The shock of a third arrow ripping through his navel proved to cross the final verge of physical pain, and as blood trickled seamlessly from the puncture wounds, Mac’s vision clouded and throat constricted ruthlessly. Trying to breathe deeply proved a horrible idea, and Mac surrendered to the last images he'd ever see of Dennis running up to him, excited and remorseless, brandishing a glittering object from his pocket. At this point as the oxygen drained from his cells, Mac's hearing would be the last sense to go, and the final words he'd ever hear were whispered against his lips. "See you in Hell," Dennis spoke and flipped open the straight razor in his right hand, deeply carving into the flesh of Mac's neck and suddenly it was the end, the whitewash of death slacking his friend's body as he bled profusely from his open veins, jugulars sliced clean through on both sides. 

Dennis felt sicker than he ever had in his entire life as he watched the blood drain from his friend's body, the weight of the corpse settling heavily and sagging against the ropes, a terribly painful death if drawn out. Freaked out by the pain he had inflicted with the arrows pinning his love against the dry bark, Dennis had a backup plan to finish the job quickly, shakily professing his love and hatred simultaneously, chanting the two until his words became a slurry of disconnected babble. He could have sworn that in those last moments of life, Mac had wordlessly communicated his undying affection through his wide brown eyes, terrified by his impending death but giving himself over without resistance, resigning himself to Dennis's quick, deft hands and accepting his fate as the sacrifice that would show everyone that Dennis was capable of loving someone so much that he would snuff them out to prove it if he had to. 

It made sense to Dennis. It wouldn't make sense to anyone else on this planet, but it didn't have to. Body wracked with the serene closure that came from watching the scene, Dennis calmly strode over to the tree, now serving as a twisted memorial of his undoing, and attempted to carefully ply the arrows from Mac's lifeless flesh. It was of no use, they were jammed into the muscle and unforgiving, it would cause more damage to rip them out. Dennis sighed and untied Mac from the tree, laid him supine on the blanket at their feet, and curled himself against the weight of the corpse. 

"God damn," he sighed raggedly, laughing quietly at the humor that only he would find in the situation. It was a bit funny to him that in this moment, they were exactly back to where they had begun - who individuals too selfish to admit how badly they needed each other, how absolutely empty their existences felt until they had each other. As dark as they could fight each other, as many nights as they'd spent angry for so many small, stupid things, failed schemes, unspoken feelings, disallowed words, empty sex, cold and meaningless kisses when they were mad at each other...it was so funny to Dennis that he'd end up alone; Mac by himself unable to fill up the gaping hole inside of his heart. No. It had to be them, together. Them. Not just him.

"Fuck it," Dennis then decided, laughing so hard he began to cry against the empty, soundless chest of his lover, pulling their bodies together into a final physical, everlasting embrace, before seizing the cool steel of Frank's pistol from his hip pocket, pulling the slide rearward and placing it against his temple.

"I'm on my way down," he whispered and took a deep breath, firing into his skull and with the kick of the pistol and plume of gun smoke, it was all over.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is taken from the gorgeous instrumental Mogwai song of the same name. I highly recommend listening to their album Happy Songs For Happy People when you can. The idea to martyr Mac in this fashion was inspired by the film Sebastiane. Let me know what you think, because this is (more or less) the first story I've written that wasn't entirely shameless porn. I wanted to take the characters as deep as I could see them through the lenses of bruising exhaustion, obsessive love, and potent reality.


End file.
